My father, the warlord

Their fathers are some of the most unpopular leaders in Afghanistan and accused of terrible human rights abuses over a 30-year period. So what’s it like to grow up as the sons of men many describe as Afghan warlords?

A fascinating story on NPR by Renee Montagne teases out the nuances where these young men in their 20s talked a lot about public accountability, living with peace and forging a better future.

Abdul Motalib Bek, a tribal leader with his own powerful militia was assassinated in 2011. His son Matin recalled that as a child during the Soviet occupation and later civil war he was never allowed to travel in the same car as his father for fear of being a target. Matin who has a degree in political science doesn’t think men will take up arms again because Afghan society has changed. He is a deputy minister and helps appoints Afghans to posts of mayor and district governor.

He told NPR: “Where I work, most of the people are young. We want to bring a change and we are trying to bring a change. For example, for the first time, district governors are passing a test, you know. We are recruiting district governor on merit basis.”

Adib Fahim is the son of Marshall Mohammed Qasim Fahim, a key commander from the north who helped the Americans topple the Taliban. Fahim and his men were given a lot of money and arms and after 9/11 he was given several prominent positions in Hamid Karzai’s government. 27-year-old Adib's career has taken a different path - he studied public policy at New York University and has worked in two ministries. 

Bator Dostum is the son of Abdul Rashid Dostum, a powerful Uzbek commander who was among the factions fighting to control Kabul during the 1990s civil war that destroyed the capital.  Bator, 23, has just finished university and is being groomed for public life, NPR reported. He is defensive of his father. 

“First of all, it's in the past and I don't believe some of these allegations are true. But, there was some of the, you know, it was this power struggle and my father was accused of a lot of things. And for me, you know, whenever he looks at me, he says you are the future. He looks at me, he says I believe you can do something in the future.” 

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

Lashkar-e-Taiba contemplating next move after U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, expert says

Lashkar-e Taiba was blamed for terror attack in Mumbai in 2008, including this attack on the Taj Mahal hotel.  (David Guttenfelder/Associated press File photo)

Lashkar-e-Taiba's well-organized attacks in 2008 on Mumbai temporarily seemed to paralyze the Indian security forces, riveted the world's attention, and put the venerable militant group back on the map.

In the five years since LeT extremists stormed the streets of Mumbai, killing 166 and holding India's commercial capital hostage, LeT has been relatively quiet. But that doesn't mean it's disappeared, argues an expert on the group.

Stephen Tankel testified Wednesday before the House Homeland Security Committee, and explained LeT's operational capabilities and the prospects for an LeT attack in North America.

Tankel, a professor at American University, non-resident Scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of the 2011 book Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba, told The Star in an interview that U.S. lawmakers are keeping tabs on LeT, which considered Mumbai an operational success, since it bolstered the group's recruiting and fundraising efforts and gave LeT a measure of prestige.

"This a group that is patient, that is calculated," Tankel said, adding it's likely based on open source evidence that LeT is continuing its recruitment efforts in North America.

In January, Pakistani-born Canadian Tahawwur Rana was sentenced to 14 years in prison for providing material support to overseas terrorism, including LeT. During the same month, American David Headley, who confessed to helping plan the  2008  attacks in Mumbai, was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

"LeT leaders saw the value in having someone like David Headley and it's fair to surmise that they are even more keen now to have more like him," Tankel said.

He said Canada and the U.S. likely remain potential LeT targets.

"Ideologically both countries remain within LeT's target set," he said. "The U.S. more so than Canada. LeT sees itself as a pan-islamist organization that defends and avenges violence against Muslims. But "they're also worried about taking steps that would endanger their privileged status within Pakistan," Tankel said.

One of the questions being posed in security circles, Tankel said, is what LeT will do after the U.S. withdraws its troops from Afghanistan next year.

It's possible that the group has been directed not to be too active in Kashmir because Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan is chock-a-block with militant activity.

Pakistan's murky Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate established Lashkar-e-Taiba in 1989 to help attack Indian resources in the disputed Kashmir region. LeT head Hafiz Muhammad Saeed currently lives in the open in Lahore, even though the U.S. has placed a $10 million bounty on his head and the United Nations has placed him on a terrorist list.

When the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, LeT may enjoy a more free hand to target Indian officials in Kashmir. Tankel said it's widely believed that LeT is active in Kashmir on a small-scale directly and indirectly through a domestic militant group know as Hizbul Mujahidin.

But it's similarly possible that Pakistan's western border won't become more peaceful in 2014.

That’s because neither the insurgency Pakistan supports in Afghanistan, nor the one it is facing at home, are likely to end.

And so the beat goes on.

U.S. and Canadians should not become complacent, said Tankel, who has interviewed numerous LeT leaders.

While LeT has resisted attacking North American targets to this point out of strategic calculation, "they could determine that they could get away with it, even if that determination is wrong. They could think 'this won't be traced back to us.' Or they could think ‘Pakistan is too weak and the U.S. is not in a position to punish us.’

"They don't always weigh cost and benefits the way we do. While keeping the threat in perspective and not overreacting, we need to be aware of the fact that it's not their ideology that is stopping LeT from attacking here."

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Guantanamo, Afghanistan and the mysterious Mauritanian

Guantanamo Bay's Camp Delta, October 24, 2010.  (MICHELLE SHEPHARD/TORONTO STAR )

When news first broke Friday that the U.S. had transfered detainees to Mauritania, the local Nouakchott press reported they were from Guantanamo.

One of the detainees, the report stated, was former Montreal imam, Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Mauritanian who has been in Guantanamo Bay since 2002. (Wall Street Journal reporter Jess Bravin has a fascinating account of Slahi and a Guantanamo prosecutor in an Atlantic Monthly excerpt of his book The Terror Courts. Slate Magazine also recently featured a diary written by Slahi).

Was this U.S. President Barack Obama making good on his recent pledge to start closing Guantanamo? Well, Guantanamo-watchers were wary of the news, especially since Slahi is not one of the 86 detainees (out of 166 remaining) that the Pentagon has cleared for transfer. The report ended up being incorrect. Slahi's lawyer confirms her client is still in Gitmo.

A detainee had been transfered it seems, just not from Guantanamo. According to Reuters, Abderhamane Ould Mohammed Al-Hussein, better known as Younis Al Mauritani, had been transfered from Afghanistan. The story seemed to die there.

But the transfer raises a few interesting questions. Who is he, why was he transfered and is he in custody in Mauritania? Younis Al Mauritania was reportedly captured in a joint operation between Pakistan and the U.S. in September 2011. A White House spokesperson called him a "senior Al Qaeda operative."

Aside from the significance of the transfer, it is interesting to note the difference as to how things operate and the level of scrutiny (and politics) in Afghanistan, as opposed to Guantanamo. Andrea Prasow, Human Rights Watch's senior counterterrorism counsel, argues that this case highlights the double standard. Why, she asked in an email to the Star, does Congress restrict Guantanamo transfers, when commanders in Afghanistan are "exercising their traditional authority to decide to release someone?"

States Prasow: "The fact that Congress has attempted to limit that authority with respect to detainees, some of whom have been held for over a decade and who have no battlefield to return to, demonstrates how political and removed from reality Guantanamo has become."

Michelle Shephard is the Star's National Security correspondent and author of"Decade of Fear: Reporting from Terrorism's Grey Zone." She is a three-time recepient of Canada's National Newspaper Award. Follow her on Twitter @shephardm

Child brides sacrificed on wedding altars

Three-year-old Sunam, wears her engagement outfit and holds hands with her fiance, her 7-year-old cousin, Nieem, in Kabul, Afghanistan, July 2007. (AP Photo/Farzana Wahidy)

Rajani was a “midnight bride,” in the rugged Indian desert state of Rajastan: one of many who are too young to marry legally, at 18, but are wedded in secret, in late night village ceremonies.  Only five, she toddled to her wedding in a pink t-shirt and plastic sun glasses. She had never met her husband-to-be, who was 10. 

Her story, reported by Cynthia Gorney in National Geographic, is not unusual in the tragic world of child brides, who may be married off to cancel family debts, solidify clan relationships, rid a poor family of an unwanted mouth to feed or avoid a daughter’s “dishonor” from male attentions as she reaches puberty.

The sorry practise is highlighted in Ottawa this week at a photo exhibition to help support young girls who are forcibly married -- and save an estimated 142 million others from meeting the same fate over the next decade.

Presented at Carleton University’s Art Gallery, it was opened on Tuesday by Foreign Minister John Baird and Status of Women Minister Rona Ambrose. The travelling exhibition, launched in 2012 by the UN’s population fund and the photo agency VII, was sponsored in Canada by the government, the university and UNFPA.

Photographed by Stephanie Sinclair and Jessica Dimmock, it features award-winning images that show the horrifying reality of the daily lives of girls whose childhoods are stolen and whose futures are held captive by poverty, custom and family control.

Many are taken from school before they can read and write, isolated from their friends and families and forced into sex and childbirth at ages when both can endanger their lives. Those who survive often live in near-slavery, dying prematurely from exhaustion and preventable diseases.

The statistics are daunting.

According to the World Health Organization, about 39,000 under age girls are married every day. At current levels, that’s more than 14 million a year. And, says Rachel Vogelstein of the Council on Foreign Relations, the author of a study released this month on ending child marriage, of the 140 million or more who will marry before the age of 18, 50 million will be younger than 15.

Although India accounts for 40 per cent of known child brides, the tradition is pervasive in South Asia, Sub Saharan Africa – as well as parts of Latin America and the Middle East, Vogelstein says in her report. The top five rates of child marriage are in Niger, Chad, Central African Republic, Bangladesh and Guinea, where more than 60 per cent of brides are younger than 18.

“The practise of child marriage is a violation of human rights,” says Vogelstein. “Every day girls around the world are forced to leave their families, marry against their will, endure sexual and physical abuse, and bear children while still in childhood themselves.”

Although marriage of girls under 18 is illegal in 158 countries, those that put little value on female lives often turn a blind eye.

Occasionally, girls manage to escape -- like 10-year-old Nujood Ali of Yemen, who became world famous by turning up in a city courthouse and announcing that she wanted a divorce. Her success encouraged others, and the liberated youngsters won public applause, though five years later Nujood is still battling for her rights.

Most are not so lucky.

The struggle to end child marriage depends on ensuring that girls are educated and have opportunities to earn a living. And above all, countries must attack the root causes that devalue the lives of girls and women from cradle to grave.

Olivia Ward has covered conflicts, human rights and politics from the former Soviet Union to South Asia and the Middle East. An Emmy-winning film, The Selling of Innocents, was based on her reporting on trafficking of girls in India. 

Balloons threaten Afghan culture and values: Taliban

Artist Yazmany Arboleda posted a photo on Instagram of Afghans being given balloons.

As peace initiatives go, it was never going to bring the 10-year Afghan war to an end but handing out 10,000 bright pink balloons on the streets of Kabul couldn’t hurt.

Residents of the Afghan capital, recovering from a shocking Taliban siege the day before, could do with forgetting about their troubles.

But New York artist Yazmany Arboleda who organized "We Believe in Balloons" still managed to earn the wrath of the Taliban. The insurgents’ official website denounced the handing out of balloons as a covert “war on our religious values.”

Qari Habib wrote on the Voice of Jihad website that the 100 volunteers were “without headscarves, with tight jeans and tops on and even with mini-skirts,” according to AFP. 

That last point about mini-skirts is highly improbable in a conservative city like Kabul.

“After distributing some balloons they wandered around Kabul aiming to break the culture of hijab,” he continued. 

For someone so concerned with outsiders changing Afghan culture that last word, ‘hijab’ is curious -- it’s an Arab word, not really used in Dari or the Taliban’s native Pashto.  Afghanistan has never had a ‘culture of hijab.’ Women tend to lightly toss a ‘chodar’ scarf over their hair, almost as an afterthought, like women in Iran, Pakistan or India. They don’t go for the more severe hijab seen on devout Arab women. 

But whether a culture is being broken is a moot point.

Arboleda told The Huffington Post that each balloon contained a message of peace from people around the world. 

"I see this project as a platform that transforms the single story of catastrophe that the world sees in Afghanistan into multiple narratives that highlight our shared humanity."

That is something that will certainly be lost on the literal-minded Taliban.

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

PHOTO: Carrying the wounded

A wounded Afghan police officer is carried away from the site of an explosion in Kabul on Friday. Several large explosions rocked a busy area in the centre of Kabul on Friday with Reuters witnesses describing shootings in the area. (REUTERS/Omar Sobhani)

Afghan women's rights: half a step forward, two steps back

Fawzia Koofi, third from left, in the Afghan parliament. (Tom Hanson/ The Canadian Press)

She has braved death threats and assassination attempts so a few religious hardliners in parliament probably isn’t a big deal for Fawzia Koofi.  The brave Afghan politician tried but failed on Saturday to push through a vote in parliament on the controversial Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

The hardliners blocked the legislation.  To give a sense of Koofi’s uphill battle, MP Khalil Ahmad Shaheedzada told The Associated Press: “Whatever is against Islamic law, we don't even need to speak about it.” 

Quite what is unIslamic about banning child marriage, forced marriage, domestic violence and the practice of families exchanging females to settle disputes is unclear. 

The 60 female parliamentarians cannot expect help from their president Hamid Karzai either. He introduced the law by presidential decree in 2009 but it has not been ratified by parliament. He has not taken on the might of the religious fundamentalists to speak up for women.

Koofi tried to bring the vote into parliament on Saturday so it could be signed into law which would prevent future presidents from repealing it. 

But the fight is not yet over. Progressive Afghans are hitting back.

A coalition of 100 Afghan civil society groups have released a statement calling on parliament, the government and the international community to pass the law and reminded them of their obligations to safeguard Afghan women.

“While Afghanistan has too much to prove on good governance and eliminating corruption front, the law remains as one of few landmark achievement to bring pride to this nation to avert all the images of past brutality and medieval treatment of women in the country,” the statement from Afghan Civil Society read.

Humayun Bayani, a scholar put the responsibility on the shoulders of the Afghan government.  

"The question now is whether President Karzai’s government will submit to the traditionalist and conservative elements and appease them and the Taliban by keeping quiet about the law or will it push for its enactment?" he wrote in Eurasia Review.  

Koofi who plans to run for president in the 2014 elections chided her opponents in a tweet:  “Afghan leaders need to adjust themselves with societal changes of Afghanistan, a small group tries to block any progress.” 

READ MORE: Fawzia Koofi plans to run for Afghan president

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

Planting nutritious gardens to grow healthy children

An Afghan woman discusses planting a kitchen garden in a small village outside Herat. (Courtesy: World Vision)

The flowers you gave your mom yesterday for Mother’s Day probably look lovely on her dining table this morning and the brunch to celebrate now a cozy memory of the weekend as she gets back to the business of being a mother. The school run, packing lunches, sorting out laundry to name a few.

For some Afghan mothers that means sowing fruit and vegetable seedlings in the kitchen garden as the spring planting season gets underway.

Chronic malnutrition is a major problem in Afghanistan – 60 per cent of children suffer from stunted growth and one in three are underweight. To help mothers learn how to make sure their children get the nutrients they need, the charity World Vision has started 770 gardens in two provinces which are the worst affected and looking to expand the program.

Eggplants, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, okra, are some of the foods mothers in Ghor and Baghdis provinces are planting which they will harvest later in the summer to cook for their families.

I spoke to Lindsay Gladding, World Vision Canada’s senior program manager who is in Herat city, the capital of the western province of Herat where she is starting to identify villages that have the worst nutrition problems.

The issue isn’t lack of availability: Afghanistan’s fertile valleys yield delicious and plentiful produce ranging from apricots to pomegranates, apples to beans, tomatoes, spinach and many more.

The trouble is getting it to the table.

"We know mothers have responsibility for preparing food for their families and the experience we’ve had is the fruits and vegetables are not accessible," she told me. "They don’t have the seeds and if they do have seeds in the markets the families don’t have money to buy it."

With the help of Afghan authorities, the charity identifies families which have the worst malnutrition. Those who have access to a bit of land are given a choice of fruits and vegetables to grow. The seeds are nurtured in a greenhouse and after a few weeks the young saplings are transferred to the ground.

Gladding said in some villages cooking demonstrations are held in health clinics where mothers are invited to watch. Or sometimes, mothers with healthy children become involved in teaching their neighbours how to prepare nutritious foods. But access to clean water to maintain the gardens is a big problem and in many cases women have to walk an hour to the nearest well or stream.

The Afghan diet is heavy on carbohydrates and starch: rice, served with bread or potatoes and if they are lucky a little bit of mutton. All of this cooked with a lot of vegetable oil. Good food is linked to good health.

"The one thing we hear a lot is the high maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates and I want to stress that malnutrition is a significant cause of both," Gladding says.

Something to think about before rolling your eyes next time your mom tells you to finish your broccoli.

READ MORE: Afghan doctor working as a tailor in Toronto

 

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

 

Tanks a (half) billion

Abrams tank in Lima, Ohio. Lawmakers have devoted nearly half a billion dollars in taxpayer money over the past two years to build improved versions. Military officials say they have plenty of them. (AP Photo/General Dynamics Land System)

Remember that gotcha moment in the 2012 U.S. election campaign?

It was during the final presidential debate, when Republican candidate Mitt Romney charged that under President Barack Obama’s watch, the U.S. navy is “smaller than at any time since 1917.”

“Well, Governor,” retorted Obama, “we also have fewer horses and bayonets … we have these things called aircraft carriers.”  Cue the laugh track.

Now history seems to be repeating itself as farce, but without the laughs.

Instead of horses and bayonets, the army is being offered $436 million in taxpayer’s dollars for some reconditioned Abrams tanks. And this at a time when the fiscally challenged U.S. has left Iraq, is exiting Afghanistan and has no appetite for a ground war anywhere we know of. 

Even the prospect of chemical weapons in Syria hasn’t set the 2,400 massive armored machines the army still possesses lumbering over the desert.

In fact, it’s saying “tanks, no thanks.”

But curiously, the fiercely cost-conscious Congress is insisting, in rare bipartisan accord.

“If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way,” army chief of staff Gen. Ray Odierno told AP -- aware that the military was under Congressional orders to cut about half a billion dollars (a few paltry million more than the tank funds) from its budget over the next decade.

The bottom line?

The defence plants are deeply embedded in the shaky economies of Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states that host some 560 contractors for the Abrams program, and would feel painful shocks in their communities if the program shut down. While corporations are offshoring their production lines and the major infrastructure projects Obama is pushing may not materialize, the military is still the backbone of the economy.

The U.S. spends more on defense than anything else except Social Security and its 2014 estimates show a projected $618 billion for defense spending -- topping $524 billion for Medicare.

“If there were no need for defense spending,” says analyst Kimberly Amadeo, “the budget deficit would be just $126 billion instead of $744 billion.”

Meanwhile, a new report from the Congressional Research Service says, “only a small proportion of U.S. workers is now employed in factories, as manufacturers have shifted low-value, labour-intensive production, such as apparel and shoe manufacturing, to other countries.” They warn of the possibility of more “hollowing out” to come.

The tanks may not end up on America’s foreign battlefields, but they’re already in the fight at home.

Olivia Ward has covered the 2008 and 2012 U.S. elections, and has written about conflict, human rights and politics from the former Soviet Union to the Middle East and South Asia, winning national and international awards.



 

Malala on Time's most influential list but her father is also an inspiration

(Courtesy of Time Magazine)

Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who stood up to the Taliban by going to school and was shot in the head by the militants for her bravery, has been named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world and her pensive, youthful gaze looks at us from the black and white cover. 

“The Taliban almost made Malala a martyr; they succeeded in making her a symbol,” wrote Chelsea Clinton in the magazine.

The 15-year-old is recovering well from her injuries. In March she returned to the classroom, studying at a girls' high school near her family’s temporary home in England where she was flown for medical treatment last year. 

She signed a $3 million book deal, landed the cover of a bastion of the liberal American establishment and the UN named November 10 Malala Day. Her fame and position as a global advocate for Muslim women is assured. 

But something else makes Malala extraordinary and sets her apart from millions of other Pakistani and Afghan schoolgirls who yearn for an education: Malala’s first champion in life was her father. In that context, she is a lucky girl. Mothers in Afghanistan and Pakistan often wish their girls could enjoy better opportunities in life than them, but it rarely happens unless the fathers agree.

The fathers almost always make the final decisions about their children’s future with one eye kept on the family's honour, which is always tied to a girl's personal reputation.  It takes a big man to ignore social pressures of a rural Pashtun culture that values girls only as mothers and housewives and a society that considers girls who are educated beyond primary school as unsuitable brides. Those attitudes are prevalent in areas not under Taliban control. In places like the Swat Valley, where the Yousafzais lived, the family had the additional terror of Taliban death threats against those who sent their girls to school. 

Ziauddin Yousafzai is an enlightened man. He ran a school named after a Pashtun poet warrior. He was an active supporter of girls’ education who wrote his daughter’s birth on the family register -- unheard of in a society that values only boys. He admitted to the New York Times once that his daughter was special, and that after his two younger sons went to bed, Malala was allowed to stay up and talk politics. On Malala’s first day of school in England it was Ziauddin who accompanied her. 

The American magazine covers may come and go, celebrity endorsements from the likes of Angelina Jolie fade, but for Malala it will be the enduring support of her father which will hold her in good stead throughout her life. 

Let’s hope Ziauddin Yousafzai now inspires other fathers in Pakistan and Afghanistan to do the same. 

Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai and her father Ziauddin walk to school in Birmingham, central England, on March 19. (LIZ CAVE/AFP/Getty Images)

Hamida Ghafour is a foreign affairs reporter at the Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

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